Focaccia bread with grapes and rosemary

[sid]

I saw this recipe the other day, and while I'm not about to start baking, I did have red grapes and rosemary languishing in my refrigerator. So I bought some readymade focaccia.

(I was looking for plain focaccia, but wound up buying asiago topped, which I must say worked really well!)

This is more of an idea than a recipe with proper measurements. I seriously think you cannot go wrong here. I've been preparing it as a side dish for one, but it would make a really great snack, or could be amped up proportionally to serve as a side dish for many, many people. Do the proportions to suit yourself and the situation.

Ingredients:

Olive oil
Rosemary
Focaccia bread
Grapes

Start olive oil heating in a pan. Add a goodly amount of chopped rosemary (whole would work, too.) Cut desired amount of focaccia bread into large bite-size chunks, add to pan. Toss. Add more olive oil if needed. Halve or quarter grapes, depending on size and preference, stirring bread as needed meanwhile. Add grapes to pan and toss.

And that's it, really. My grapes came from the fridge, so I just cooked until the chill was gone and they were slightly warm. The original recipe calls for coarse sugar and sea salt sprinkled on the bread before baking, but as I mentioned, my bread was already topped with asiago cheese, so I really didn't require any more seasoning. I do think a little salt would be needed if the bread were plain, to balance out the sweetness of the grapes.

It's easy, it's good, and there's just something fun about it! And I think the flavor profile could be altered in so many ways. It could be heated up with some red pepper flakes, curry powder might be good, some honey would turn it into a dessert.

I'm entranced by the possibilites. :-)

Comments

[zdashamber]

That's a fascinating idea! Something that makes me wonder if I'm conceiving it right, though: in the original recipe, how would sugar and salt stick to the foccacia as it was first getting cut into bitesized chunks, and then getting stirfried? Am I wrong in picturing this as a stirfry (though not as hot etc)?

Is the idea that the bread soaks up the oil?

[sid]

The original recipe was just for baking bread - the chunking a prepared loaf up and "stirfrying" it over low heat is my idea. I wanted it to get slightly warm, like a freshbaked loaf would be, and I wanted to incorporate the grapes and rosemary that were baked into the dough in the original recipe.

The olive oil gets infused with the rosemary flavor and helps the rosemary stick to the bread. I don't use very much. The bread could definitely soak up a good deal more, and that would be tasty, too!